Category: Thought

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

My main conclusion from reading the [National Climate Assessment] report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change.

Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.

After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.

It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.

The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him.

Legislation that limits or hampers exchanges is always either hurtful or superfluous.
Governments that persuade themselves that nothing good can be done but through their instrumentality, refuse to acknowledge this harmonic law.
Exchange develops itself naturally until it becomes more onerous than useful, and at that point it naturally stops.

There is nothing in the world, where a government is, in any degree, limited and restrained, so useful for getting rid of all limit and restraint, as wars. The power of almost all governments is greater during war than during peace. But in the case of limited governments, it is so, in a very remarkable degree.

It never ought to be forgotten, that, in every country, there is “a Few,” and there is “a Many”; that in all countries in which the government is not very good, the interest of “the Few” prevails over the interest of “the Many,” and is promoted at their expence. “The Few” is the part that governs; “the Many” the part that is governed.